FONTLOG Old Standard font family ======================== This file provides detailed information on the Old Standard family of fonts. This information should be distributed along with the Old Standard fonts and any derivative works. Basic Font Information ---------------------- The Old Standard font family is an attempt to revive a specific type of Modern (classicist) style of serif typefaces, very commonly used in various editions printed in the late 19th and early 20th century, but almost completely abandoned later. Although contemporary typographers often consider this lettertype obsolete and out-of-fashion, it still has at least two advantages: -- The classicist style still can be considered a good choice for typesetting scientific papers, especially on social and humanitarian sciences, as its specific features are closely associated in the people's eyes with old books they learned on; -- the most beautiful examples of Greek and Cyrillic lettertypes were all based on the Modern style, so that for those scripts "Modern" fonts are much more appropriate than any contemporary (e. g. Times-based) designs. That's why the Old Standard font family has two main purposes: it is intended to be used as a specialized font for philologists (mainly classicists, germanists and slavists) and also as a general-purpose font for typesetting various editions in languages which use Greek or Cyrillic script. For this reason Old Standard provides glyphs for a wide range of Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters. The name "Old Standard" was selected as opposed to the "Obyknovennaya Novaya" ("New Standard") typeface, widely used in the Soviet typography, which represents another, slightly different type of the same Modern style. The digital version of this font is now available from Paratype (http://www.paratype.ru). Of course this name doesn't look very original, but it seems to be a good choice for a revival of the most common lettertype of the early 20th century. ChangeLog --------- 2008 November 24 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 2.0.2 * My TTF files somehow got autoinstructed with wrong settings. This resulted into inconsistent bearings under certain PPEM's. 2008 November 23 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 2.0.1 * Oops. GPOS kerning was broken in 2.0. * If the same set of rules is shared by several features, then use just one lookup registered for more than one feature to store them. 2008 November 18 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 2.0 + A bold version is now available! + Added a full set of historical Cyrillic characters, as defined in Unicode 5.1; + Implemented Roman numerals and ancient Roman epigraphic letters (including Claudian letters). * Switched to lookup-based representation of the OpenType data in the source files to conform the new FontForge's file format; * Now both cubic and quadratic versions of the font outlines are stored in the same source files (one file for each style), as FontForge's new approach to multilayered fonts allows this; * Switched to OFL version 1.1; * FontForge now can generate reasonably good TTF instructions (it could not when OldStandard v. 1.0 was released). So the TTF fonts are now automatically instructed with FontForge. I still include the old instructions for the regular version (prepared with Peter Baker's xgridfit utility) into the source package, but they are no longer used in the font itself. This certainly makes some glyphs look worse, but improves the overall performance of the font (especially in the antialiased mode); * Danish Aringacute redesigned (now has the acute at the top of the ring and a specially designed, reduced in size, diacritic for the capital glyph); * Redesigned cedilla and all combinations with this accent in the upright font; * More contour cleanup; * Added accented combinations with "W" for Welsh; * Added several new math characters to the regular font. The intent was to fully cover the TeX OMS encoding, but this task is still far from being reached; * There is now a dedicated Unicode codepoint for capital insular "G" (U+A77D), so move the corresponding glyph to that location; * Corrected the shape of Greek symbol phi (U+03D5). It is still not recommended to use this glyph instead of the normal (looped) form; * Several new characters have been added, including the Latin letter EZH (U+01B7/U+0292) and capital Es Zett for German (U+1E9E). There are some new combining marks as well; * I used to consider the breve accent should always take the typically Cyrillic form when used after Cyrillic letters. However this assumption seems to be wrong: the specific form of the diacritic is actually an attribute of just three letters, i. e. "short i" (Russian etc.), "Short u" (Byelorussian) and "zhe with breve" (Moldavian). 2007 July 14 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 1.1 (not released) * Added Latin letters OPEN E and OPEN O, requested by an African user; * New glyph for ampersand in the upright font; * Redesigned Polish ogonek and Czech comma-like caron; * More work on italic Greek letters; * General contour cleanup for some glyphs. 2007 January 22 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 1.0 * Added the WHITE SQUARE (U+25A1) character; * Minor corrections in the fonts themselves and in the PDF manual. 2006 December 12 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.9 * Added a few more Latin Extended-B characters, yogh and wynn in particular (thanks to Peter Baker for the valuable information on the design of the letter yogh he provided). I also have implemented uppercase and lowercase versions of the insular "g". Thus Old Standard is now suitable for typesetting texts in Old and Middle English. * Added Hebrew aleph and a few Fraktur characters, useful for critical apparatus, especially in Bible/New Testament editions. * Implemented a full set of standard f-ligatures, present in most OpenType fonts. * Andrew Panov has convinced me to implement a set of mathematical glyphs, designed in the style of traditional Russian math typesetting. These glyphs are currently available only in the regular version of the font. * A PDF manual, explaining various features of the font, is now available. * Greek sampi (both uppercase and lowercase) has been redesigned. * Implemented Greek lunate epsilon and reversed lunate epsilon (the design doesn't match the remaining Greek letters though). Thus all Unicode slots intended for "alternate" and mathematical Greek glyphs are now covered. * A few improvements in the TTF instructions for the regular font (drop-out control has been enabled). * Several minor corrections in the OpenType layouts. 2006 October 01 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.8 * Implemented a set of TrueType instructions (hints) for the regular font (italics are still unhinted). I would like to thank Peter Baker for his excellent (and extremely well documented) xgridfit program (http://xgridfit.sourceforge.net), which provides a good Open Source solution for gridfitting, or "hinting," TrueType fonts. * The TrueType version of the regular font now has a separate source file (OldStandard.ttf.sfd) with quadratic splines. * Changed the naming convention for the TrueType version: the font name now has a "TT" suffix, so that both TTF and OTF versions can be installed on the same system simultaneously. * Added a few Latin Extended-B characters, useful mainly for germanists, in particular "b" with bar, "o" with ogonek and hwair. Also I have corrected shapes of lowercase eth and thorn. Thus Old Standard now includes all characters necessary for representing Old Icelandic texts and Gothic transliteration. Still more characters (the most important of them being uppercase and lowercase yogh) are needed for a proper support of Old/Middle English. * As usual, a few minor bugs have been corrected. 2006 June 09 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.7 * Added OpenType layouts for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. Special attention has been paid to correct shaping and positioning of diacritical marks. * Minor corrections of glyph shapes. 2006 May 08 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.6 * Licensing changed to the SIL Open Font License. * Added Greek glyphs, including those in the U+1F00--U+1FFF "Greek Extended" Unicode range. * Ukrainian and Serbian Cyrillic glyphs were redesigned in order to bring them into a better correspondance with real examples of the early 20th century printing. * The standard mathematical operation signs were redesigned and significantly enlarged, so that now their implementation contradicts to the contemporary standards, but better corresponds to the European tradition of math typesetting. * Several additional math characters, needed to provide a full coverage for the Mac Roman encoding, have been added. * Ancient Greek metrical characters (U+23D1--U+23D9) have been implemented. * A TTF version is released in addition to OpenType-CFF fonts. It has no hinting at all, so don't complain for bad screen rendering! 2006 Feb 14 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.2 * First public release. Acknowledgements ---------------- (Here is where contributors can be acknowledged. If you make modifications be sure to add your name (N), email (E), web-address (W) and description (D). This list is sorted by last name in alphabetical order.) N: Alexey Kryukov E: alexios@thessalonica.org.ru W: http://www.thessalonica.org.ru D: Original Designer of Latin, Greek and Cyrillic glyphs For more information please visit the Fonts page on Thessalonica's website: http://www.thessalonica.org.ru/en/fonts.html. Or send an email to .